A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to enable north Carolina educational institutions and nonprofit companies to participate in grants awarded by the united states department of energy.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.  There is appropriated from the General Fund to the Department of Commerce for fiscal year 2010‑2011 the sum of one million five hundred thousand dollars ($1,500,000) to make grants to a North Carolina research university or a domestic, nonprofit corporation to enable the university or nonprofit corporation to provide the matching funds needed to obtain one or more grants from the United States Department of Energy. Five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) of the funds appropriated in this section are reserved to provide the matching funds necessary to leverage a three‑year, fifteen million dollar ($15,000,000) federal grant to RTI International to study the conversion of carbon dioxide to methane. To obtain the grant, RTI International must certify that at least fifty percent (50%) of the grant will be spent in North Carolina. 
A "North Carolina research university" is an educational institution that meets the requirements of G.S. 105‑129.50(9)a. and is located in North Carolina. Funds appropriated by this section that are not expended at the end of the fiscal year do not revert to the General Fund and remain available to the Department for the purpose set out in this section.
SECTION 2.  This act becomes effective July 1, 2010.